Updated: 9 October 2026 · Applies to: Plesk Obsidian 18.0 (18.0.81) for Linux, menus from Plesk documentation; zone checks tested with BIND 9.20

Plesk takes the name servers of every new domain from its server-wide DNS template. To make all domains use your own name servers, such as ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com, go to Tools & Settings > DNS Settings (under General Settings), open the Zone Records Template tab, change the two NS records to your name servers and click Apply DNS Template Changes so existing domains get them too. Then register ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com with their IP addresses (glue records) at the registrar of example.com.

How Plesk sets name servers by default

Out of the box, each domain gets its own name servers. According to Plesk, a new domain’s zone contains ns1.<domain> and ns2.<domain>, both pointing to the server’s IP address, so customer.example is served by ns1.customer.example and ns2.customer.example. That works, but every customer then has to create glue records for their own domain.

With one set of default name servers on your own domain, you register the glue records once and every customer simply points their domain to ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com. The steps below set this up. Replace example.com and the documentation IPs 192.0.2.10 and 192.0.2.11 with your own; if the server has only one IP, both names can point to it.

Step 1: Create the name server host names

  1. Log in to Plesk as the administrator (see how to log in to Plesk).
  2. Open Websites & Domains, select example.com, open the Hosting & DNS tab and click DNS.
  3. Make sure there is an A record for ns1.example.com and one for ns2.example.com, each pointing to an IP address of the server (in this example 192.0.2.10 and 192.0.2.11). Add or correct them with Add Record if needed. More on editing records: manage DNS records in Plesk.

If example.com itself is hosted elsewhere, create these two A records wherever its DNS is managed.

Keep both A records. BIND, the DNS server Plesk uses on Linux, refuses to load a zone whose own NS names have no address. We checked a zone with ns2 missing:

$ named-checkzone example.com example.com.zone
zone example.com/IN: NS 'ns2.example.com' has no address records (A or AAAA)
zone example.com/IN: not loaded due to errors.

With both A records present, the same check prints loaded serial 2026100901 and OK.

Step 2: Change the server-wide DNS template

  1. Go to Tools & Settings > DNS Settings (under General Settings) and open the Zone Records Template tab.
  2. Click the name of the first NS record (<domain>. with the value ns1.<domain>.), enter ns1.example.com as the name server and click OK.
  3. Do the same for the second NS record with ns2.example.com.
  4. Leave the A records ns1.<domain>. and ns2.<domain>. in the template, even though customer domains no longer need them. According to Plesk, records you delete from the template are also deleted from every zone that users have not changed when you apply the template, and that would remove ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com from your own domain’s zone. If you do remove other records, keep the domain’s A record: Plesk warns that without it domains stop resolving. Reset to Default restores the original template.
  5. Open the Zone Settings Template tab. Under Primary Name Server, choose the name server that should be the source of the zone for secondary servers, and set the contact (RNAME) email address if you want one address for all zones.

The same template can be changed from the command line. According to Plesk, this adds an NS record to it:

plesk bin server_dns --add -ns "" -nameserver "ns1.example.com"

Avoid plesk bin server_dns --set unless you give it the complete list of records: it removes every record that is not in the list.

Step 3: Apply the template to existing domains

Template changes apply automatically to domains created from now on. For domains that already exist on Plesk for Linux:

  1. In Tools & Settings > DNS Settings, click Apply DNS Template Changes.
  2. Choose Apply the changes only to DNS zones that were not modified by users or Apply the changes to all DNS zones.

Records that users added or changed themselves are never touched. After an upgrade, a restore or a migration, Plesk treats every zone as user-modified, so pick Apply the changes to all DNS zones in that case. A single domain can be updated from its own DNS page with Apply DNS Template. Plesk documents this synchronisation for Linux only; on Plesk for Windows, change the NS records of existing domains in each domain’s DNS settings.

Step 4: Register the name servers at the registrar

  1. Log in at the registrar where example.com is registered.
  2. Create the child name servers (also called glue records, host names or personal name servers): ns1.example.com with 192.0.2.10 and ns2.example.com with 192.0.2.11. See create custom name servers using your domain.
  3. For each hosted domain, set its name servers at its own registrar to ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com. Plesk says the change can take up to 24 hours to work everywhere.

Step 5: Check the result

dig +short ns1.example.com A
dig +short NS customer.example
dig @192.0.2.10 customer.example SOA +short

The first command should return your server’s IP, the second your two name servers and the third the zone’s SOA record straight from Plesk. If the last one fails, the DNS service is stopped or a firewall blocks port 53 (UDP and TCP). For what each record does, see what is a nameserver.

Two name servers on one Plesk server still fail together. For real redundancy, Plesk supports a separate secondary DNS server through its Slave DNS Manager extension. If you need a Plesk licence for your own VPS or dedicated server, Ucartz offers Plesk licences.

Official documentation: Plesk DNS Settings (server-wide template) and server_dns command.

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